Hermeneutics
by Imadra Blue
Summary: In the aftermath of genocide, any religion must question its philosophy and reinterpret itself so that it may continue in the wake of so many sorrows. Gen.


**Character(s):** Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Luke, Leia  
**Disclaimer:** Star Wars and all its characters are property of Lucasfilm Ltd. No copyright infringement is intended.  
**Notes:** For Neotoma as a holiday gift. My religious references are a bit heavy on the Daoism and Buddhism, but I also included references to Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Very few EU ideas were included in here, if any at all. Many thanks to Gizzi1213 for her helpful beta reading.

...

_**Jedi Geya-Vyakarana, Lukevacana**_  
_From the words and wisdom of Master Luke Skywalker, founder of the Neo-Jedi Order…_

...

Qui-Gon Jinn had waited for the children for a very long time. They had dawdled for two years since their victories, always inventing excuses, especially the girl. And the boy would not come here without his sister.

They looked sad and small, wrapped up in their triba fur coats. Their footsteps echoed across empty halls, their breath visible in the cold air. Here and there, they would pause by an old bloodstain or the black scoring of a blaster bolt on marble. They did not speak as they clasped each other's hand.

It did not take them long to find the bodies.

...

__

Of the Ancients, humans first mastered the Force, finally rising above mysterious psychic phenomena and primitive witchcraft. They discovered how to communicate with the energy field formed by all life in the universe, how to use it to move objects with a thought and even sense the innermost feelings of another being. They turned a blind eye to the differences in the Force, wrongly believing it to be a mere power source.

At that time, humans arrogantly thought they were the only beings in existence. They clung like insects to the dying carcass of their birth planet, unable to understand that thought alone could reveal the path to the rest of the universe.

It was a time of blindness to many things.

...

"I… didn't know that they just left their bodies here to rot," Leia said, wiping her face to cover the tears.

Luke did not bother to hide his. "Ben… oh, Ben," he whispered. "Why didn't you tell me what we would find here?"

Obi-Wan Kenobi did not answer him. Obi-Wan merely stood to Luke's side, unseen, unperturbed, untouchable. He had wanted Anakin's children to see this. They needed to understand.

This was their Trial.

Leia clasped the skeletal hand of the smallest corpse in the room. "This one couldn't have been older than three."

"Who would do such a thing?" Luke asked, his voice echoing down the cold halls of the Jedi Temple.

...

__

The humans quickly discovered hyperspace when their thoughts focused in the right direction. They spread through their galaxy and others like poison, taking with them their teachings of the Force. Soon, other races across the universe came to know of the Great Impetus of Existence.

But knowing is not understanding.

A great war broke out across the universe. The Ancients' weapons wreaked such destruction that they extinguished entire solar systems in a single night. Galaxy after galaxy winked out. Beings fled from their galaxies before they, too, were swallowed by the darkness.

Then, and only then, did the Ancients finally come to understand the Force.

...

Qui-Gon watched as the children carried the skeletal corpses to the central hall. They did not call for help. Somehow, they understood that it was their duty, and theirs alone, to honor the dead. These were their people.

Obi-Wan watched them, still quiet. Beside him stood a glimmer, little more than a sliver of light. Qui-Gon frowned. Obi-Wan still clung to the past.

"He is not like the rest of us," Qui-Gon told Obi-Wan without words. Here, in the Force, they had no bodies, no mouths, no voices. "He does not belong here."

"I know that better than you do, Master."

Even after all Obi-Wan had weathered through, all he had done, he still called Qui-Gon "Master," though he had far exceeded Qui-Gon in accomplishment. Even Yoda could not visit the living with the ease that Obi-Wan did. Yet, it was Obi-Wan that clung to attachment the most.

Qui-Gon reached out to touch Obi-Wan, to join with him and blend their spirits so Qui-Gon could understand what Obi-Wan thought, but Obi-Wan drew away.

"We brought him back for the boy's sake," Qui-Gon said. "The time has past for the boy to see him. Let him go."

Obi-Wan only shook his head and turned away. The glimmer of what once was Anakin Skywalker followed him.

...

_The Ancients found a new galaxy, pure and primitive. The beings that survived the Great Cataclysm were drawn to it like sodarimoths to flame. They scattered across this nameless, hidden galaxy, building new civilizations. Soon, they forgot their pasts. All they knew was the here and now._

_Those humans who still knew the Force became keepers of the peace. They communed with the light side of the Force, dwelling in its warmth and peace. They forged a path that avoided the shadows of the dark side, but in order to do that, they had to shed what made them human._

_Others followed them, beings from all races, some who found shedding humanity much easier, for they had not been human to begin with. As the past was forgotten, so too was war. Serenity and harmony were the watchwords of this newly forged galaxy._

_In time, the people of this new galaxy remembered the past. They created weapons of war again—none so grand as the weapons that had destroyed the Ancients' home galaxies, but they promised larger weapons in the future, weapons that could destroy entire planets._

_Inevitably, those who knew the Force discovered the dark side anew._

...

Luke and Leia were close now, and Obi-Wan hovered near them. He still had not spoken to them, for no words could convey what he wanted to tell them. This discovery had to be their own.

"What is this place?" Leia asked, drawing down the hood of her coat to fully gaze around the Archives.

"It's some sort of archival system, I think," Luke replied. He walked down the rows of desks, running his fingers over the dusty consoles.

"I've never seen anything this advanced outside of the…" Leia took a breath, and her pain flashed through the Force, washing over Obi-Wan. Beside him, Anakin winked in and out, guilt creating a new Hell for him. "… outside of the Death Star."

Luke squeezed his sister's hand. "The Jedi were very advanced. They'd kept the old ways."

"Do you think it will tell us what happened to them?"

Luke paused by the largest console and considered it for a moment before speaking. "What did Senator Organa tell you?" Luke said Bail's name gently, with a sort of breathless reverence that he had once reserved for his own father.

Leia gazed up at the window, freshly unshuttered. Sunlight poured in, though it did not warm the Temple. "He told me that the Jedi were murdered by Darth Vader and his stormtroopers."

"He had to be mistaken." Luke pressed the power button on the console. "My history classes had always taught me that the Jedi were killed during a rebellion. There were children here. Our father couldn't have—"

"He's not my father."

"But you are my sister. You admit that."

Leia glanced at him, her eyes as cold and hard as durasteel. "Being a father requires more than donating genetic material."

Beside Obi-Wan, Anakin's form winked in and out again as he created another Hell for himself.

...

__

It did not take long after the creation of the Jedi for their opposite to emerge from their own Order. Certain Jedi did not believe in the Code, and they saw no evil in darkness. Though their intentions were pure, their arrogance led them astray, as arrogance always does. When they embraced the dark side, they forgot the light side.

The Jedi defeated them, chasing them far away from the Galactic Core. The survivors fled to a long-forgotten planet where a vicious race known as the Sith dwelled. Taking the survivors as their Lords, the Sith found their new masters so cruel that their names became curses.

Under the tutelage of the Dark Lords, the Sith grew more powerful than any other race and soon waged war against the galaxy. The war was debilitating, once again nearly destroying the galaxy, even without aid of superweapons. But just when all seemed lost, darkness brought about its own undoing once again.

The Sith Lords fought amongst each other, vying for power, for glory, for nothing at all. When the war ended, the Sith had defeated the Sith, their race lost and forgotten but for the names of their masters. Only two Sith Lords escaped to begin again, leaving the Jedi and the galaxy in peace for a thousand generations.

History is a wheel, and without understanding, it will continue to blindly turn in the same direction.

...

The children watched the security holos in stunned silence. Even as much as the girl denied her father, she would not tear her gaze from the image of him slaughtering hundreds of innocent Jedi. Every Jedi in the Temple fell before their eyes, down to the very infants. Horror and great sorrow reverberated through the Force. Qui-Gon simply let it pass through him. The children needed to see this.

Obi-Wan did not watch the holos, though the glimmer of the dead man beside him constantly winked out, a new Hell spawning with every image of a Jedi's death. Qui-Gon had at first thought that Obi-Wan kept the shadow of Anakin Skywalker on the Path of the Whills out of some sort of desire to make Anakin suffer, but Obi-Wan was not the sort of man to desire vengeance. As Anakin suffered, so too did Obi-Wan, yet he kept Anakin tethered to him, sharing his place on the Whills.

"He is dead, Obi-Wan. You must let him go back into the Force. This path to immortality that we have found is not for him. Anakin never understood the Force as we do."

"And you do not understand the Force as I do, Master. I have told you before, and I will tell you again. His place is beside me, just as mine is beside him."

"That is attachment—a sentimental connection to a man who never achieved enlightenment and cannot exist as we exist after death."

"'Enlightenment?'" Obi-Wan had no face left to emote with, but his disbelief was palpable. "What is 'enlightenment' to you, Master?"

"It is achieving full understanding of the Force, of realizing we are nothing but the Force, of letting go of all attachments to embrace the entire universe."

"That is not enlightenment. Have you never wondered why you cannot materialize to the living as I can? Why it took you so long to communicate with Yoda and I? Why only we can commune with you? Why both you and Yoda have such difficulty manifesting as I do?"

"You think to teach me a lesson in enlightenment, then, my former Padawan?"

"No, Master. You can only discover it for yourself."

The boy finally turned the security holos off.

...

_The Jedi lived by a Code, and they died by that Code. It was not the Code that was wrong, but the interpretation of it. The Jedi professed to be free of fear, but they lived in fear's shadow. They understood the Force better than the Ancients, but not enough. They still refused the dark side._

_The Force itself tried to help them. A Savior was born, destined to lead them to truth, to justice, to eternal peace. But he failed, for he did not understand the truth any better than they did._

_He was too old, too angry, too set in his ways._

...

Luke whirled around. He stared at the spot where Obi-Wan would have stood, had he a body to stand with. But Luke could not see him. Obi-Wan did not wish it.

Leia turned to her brother, her face wet with tears. "Do you still want to call him your father now?"

Luke studied her for a moment before answering. "More than ever. I've forgiven him. Because I loved him."

"How can you love someone like that? Someone who murdered children? Someone who betrayed his own religion and committed genocide?"

"I don't know. I don't think love requires explanation."

Anakin stopped winking in and out, and his image grew a bit stronger. Obi-Wan could feel him closer than ever, and though he was still trapped in the Hells of his own making, a moment of peace settled over him.

Obi-Wan smiled. Luke, at least, understood.

...

_Say: There is no emotion, there is peace._

_It is not that there is no emotion, but that we should seek to experience peace, not emotion. No joy and no sorrow can compare to it._

...

Qui-Gon watched the children intently. The girl seemed to accept her brother's words much easier than Qui-Gon could.

The boy had attachment, yet the boy resonated as pure and strong in the Force as Qui-Gon had once thought Anakin would have.

Qui-Gon turned to Obi-Wan, who seemed to stand on another place of existence that Qui-Gon could not comprehend yet. "Tell me, Obi-Wan. Why is it that you have forgiven Anakin so easily? Why do you tether him to you? You urged the boy to kill Vader, as both Yoda and I would have."

"Words are not thoughts, Master. Killing Anakin would have solved nothing. But if there was one thing I learned in life, it's that young men respond to the opposite of what their elders tell them."

The universe seemed to whirl around Qui-Gon like a carousel gone made. Obi-Wan's presence grew stronger, stilling the universe as he drew nearer to Qui-Gon. Fingers that no longer existed tangled with Qui-Gon's spirit, recalling a time when a small boy with bright eyes clung to Qui-Gon, begging him to show him the levitating blocks trick one more time—but it was only a memory, for Obi-Wan withdrew before their spirits could unite and their thoughts mingle.

"Master, in life, you came closer to understanding what I know now, in death, than any of us. But death trapped you, prevented you from growing any further."

Qui-Gon started to object, but Obi-Wan continued. "Luke knows, he sees. His sight is what helped me to see. When he abandoned his training to save those he loved, yet still rejected the dark side, I knew that he was wiser than any of us. Love must be accepted, not rejected. Love is what peace and knowledge and serenity and harmony truly mean. Letting go of love only cuts us off from the Force."

Obi-Wan withdrew back to Anakin's side. Anakin's spirit flashed calm for a moment, before returning to the depths of his torment. "You call my love for Anakin attachment, Master. I call it salvation."

Obi-Wan and Anakin withdrew fully into the Force. Qui-Gon could not sense either of them in the labyrinth of infinity.

...

_Say: There is no ignorance, there is knowledge._

_There will always be ignorance, for no mortal being is ever born knowing everything. All beings must seek their own enlightenment in their own manner._

...

Love had destroyed Anakin.

Or was it hate?

Qui-Gon had let go of his love long ago, even before his death. He had always known that one day that the boy he considered a son would leave him, and he had known he must eschew attachments. He had let the emotion drain from him like water from a tilted cup as Obi-Wan grew older.

Was Qui-Gon's capacity to love truly gone?

Was Obi-Wan right?

Had the Jedi been wrong all along?

Yoda had long since withdrawn into the Force to meditate on the Jedi's failing, to find the true path that eluded him, but Qui-Gon had been satisfied with what there was.

Wasn't he?

He had loved.

He did love.

...

_Say: There is no passion, there is serenity._

_Passion is inescapable. We exist, therefore we desire. Passion motivates us, a flame that fuels our accomplishments. But passion, like emotion, is never the goal. Passion is merely the vehicle that allows us to find serenity._

...

Luke and Leia drew up short when the blue image of a strange man shimmered into view in front of them. He was a tall man, dressed in Jedi robes, his leonine face oddly familiar. Neither Luke nor his sister spoke as the ghostly man stared down the long, dusty hallway, down to where the Jedi corpses had been piled.

"There should be a pyre. The entire Temple should be their pyre."

That he was a Jedi was obvious, but Luke saw glimpses in this man of other Jedi he had known. Somehow, this tall, bearded man reflected Ben and Yoda and even Anakin in his eyes.

"We can't burn the Temple. We have to go through the Archives and learn what the Jedi knew. We have to rebuild," Luke said. He glanced at Leia, who stood with her mouth open. She had not seen Ben yet—Ben had said she wasn't ready. He sensed her surprise, yet he also sensed she was close to understanding what it meant.

The tall man beamed at Luke. "No, Luke. The Jedi knew nothing that you do not already know. There is nothing else in this Temple for you. You already comprehend how to rebuild the Jedi, how to break the wheel of history, how to make the galaxy truly peaceful."

"Me? I don't really know much of anything, Master."

The man bowed. "On the contrary. You showed Obi-Wan the true path of enlightenment, as he has shown me. We will talk more, but not now. Later, when she is ready." The man smiled at Leia and then faded away, leaving behind only dust motes that sparkled in the afternoon light.

"Who was that? What did he mean?" Leia whispered.

"I don't know. I guess we'll find out later."

Leia fell silent. Luke left her to her thoughts. After a long moment, she pulled off her coat. "It's not cold anymore, did you notice?"

Luke smiled and pulled off his own coat. "Yes."

...

__

Say: There is no chaos, there is harmony.

As long as there is a light side of the Force, there must be a dark side. One thing cannot be defined without its opposite. The lack of either causes imbalance which causes chaos. Chaos will always subsist, because beings are naturally drawn to one side or the other, for it takes effort to understand both. Chaos, the imbalance, should be avoided. We should always aspire to reach the harmony of truth and understanding.

...

Qui-Gon could find Obi-Wan now. The entire Force opened before him, revealing myriad paths and voices, a song so pure that words could not express its beauty. The Force did not power existence; existence powered it. Countless lives, large and small, human and non-human, wove it into being. The Force was the individual, just as the individual formed part of the Force. It was separation and unity, all at once.

Anakin's form was light, transparent and delicate. His light constantly waxed and waned, pain and guilt calling him to the mindless unity of the Force, even as Obi-Wan called him to individuality and being. Anakin suffered like no other creature had ever suffered, lost and unseeing, blinded to the beauty of the Force by the Hells of his own making. Obi-Wan remained at his side, protecting him, offering him the guidance that a Master should offer his apprentice.

"Will he ever find his way out?" Qui-Gon asked.

Obi-Wan smiled down at Anakin, his spirit blurring with Anakin for a brief instant. Anakin's form grew strong and serene, resonating with the Force. When they separated, Anakin wavered, lost once again in his Hells. "I don't know. But I will give him that chance. It's the least I can do for him."

"Was it the Jedi's fault that the Chosen One turned to the dark side? That he refused his destiny for so long? Did our blindness ruin him?"

"No being can blame their own ignorance on another."

"Was all that death and destruction truly the will of the Force? Did the Jedi truly have to be destroyed to be remade through Luke?"

"Destruction is never the goal of the unified Force, Master. Anakin failed to live up to his destiny, but Luke has succeeded where the Chosen One could not."

Qui-Gon moved closer to Obi-Wan. "We create our own destinies."

"Yes, Master, as you always told me. You always knew. You just needed to climb the last rung of the ladder to your enlightenment."

This time, when Qui-Gon reached for Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan allowed their spirits to fully unite. The Force surrounded them, echoing with the songs of countless voices from past, present, and future.

As long as one voice rang out, the Force would never die.

...

__

Say: There is no death, there is the Force.

All that lives must one day die. No being ever escapes this. It is natural to mourn a loss, but we must rejoice in the passing of others, for they rest in the warm glow of the Force. Of all that we seek, the Force is our true goal, the inescapable goal.

If you understand peace, and knowledge, and serenity, and harmony, then you know the Force.

And if you know the Force, then you know love.


End file.
